So I Guess I Like iTunes After All

Don't ask me why, but I've always been a bit leery of iTunes. Maybe it's because I don't have an iPod or anything (I do have an mp3 player, but it's a Sandisk). But I have to hand it to iTunes for actually having a song I've been wanting for ages now: "Ah, Men," by Alix Korey.
I first heard this song when I used to listen to Live365 more, around 2004. Mostly I listened to the stations that played musicals, but I also got into bossa nova for a while. I had three main Broadway stations I listened to, a big one and a smaller one that both played pretty standard stuff, and one that played stuff I hadn't heard anywhere else, including the song this post is about. Most stations have a random play, and that one did at first, but after a while, it started having a set playlist that changed every month or so (for instance, June was always focused on the Tonys, songs from the nominated shows, songs from shows that won before, or sung by nominees and winners). I heard "Ah, Men" early on, but then it didn't show up again for a while. I pointed this out to the guy who ran the station when I wrote to him asking where in the world he had found a copy of the Japanese version of The Goodbye Girl, a musical I was infatuated with when I was in Jr. High (during my Bernadette Peters phase). He wrote back saying that he had a single that just had the one song ("I Think I Can Play This Part," in case you're wondering) that he bought in England, and he promised to include "Ah, Men" the next time he changed his playlist. And he did, which made me very happy for the whole time that playlist was up.
Now, I'd flirted every now and then with the idea of buying the album that song was from, but since I really didn't know much else by Alix Korey, and I'd been burned by buying a CD just because I liked one song from it before (Oasis' What's the Story, Morning Glory?), so I could never quite bring myself to do it. And then just yesterday, it occurred to me that I might be able to get just "Ah, Men" on iTunes (I have a copy, but I rarely use it), and sure enough, there it was. So now I can listen to it as much as I can. And since this copy of the song isn't horribly quiet (like the one on that station was), I was finally able to "get" the ending.

A related story: When that station added "Ah, Men" for me, I of course got to know the playlist very well, so I knew when there were only a few songs to go before "Ah, Men" was going to play. Because I wasn't a paying member, I had to listen to an ad whenever I switched stations, and since the song is short as it is (only two and a half minutes), I made sure I was there at least two songs in advance. And the song right before it was a perfectly dull (and long) sequence from The Woman in White called "All For Laura." I hated that song so, so much because I was forced to listen to it to get to "Ah, Men." So much that I transfered some of that hate to the show itself (which I heard wasn't that good, anyway). And to this day, I refuse to have anything to do with it.